Of Boredom

When on soft waves of waking thought our small minds undulate
It seeing every single thing with spirit full and sate
With full and true awareness of the goodness of the land
That God-All-Good does always give us from his mighty hand.

When the fullness does proceed from some absence of care
That is the everlasting lot of humans everywhere
When nothing pressing urgently does force one to a point
Requir’d for action. When one may see All Counterpoint

When this soul’s awareness is both all a-restless and awake
When in its deepest recesses it feels that it will break
With longing for the infinite blest vision beatific
But faint enough to not disturb thought-process scientific

When one is free to full indulge in mystic pink profession
When one has the liberty to have a mad obsession
With the fair slowed-down sanity that all our hearts desire:
Contemplation; the act that is a calmant, ice, and fire.

When all these fair requirements are fully now fulfilled
And when this blessed, blessed, state is unwilled yet not unwilled
He who does in truth observe this blessed state: he can
In all truth and honesty say “There goes a bored man1”

Many will say that this small mind is growen smaller still
And that it has in passing lost all blessedness of will
For boredom is a strangely land, not widely understood
And has the double fate of being quite evil or quite good.

And when all these fair requirements are fully now fulfilled
And when this blessed, blessed state is unwilled yet not unwilled
One can see with clearest eye, as through clear air afar
And close as well, one can see things as they are.

Without mental word or thought, but with only mental sight
That with all intuition knows eternal wrong from right
The boreded man can truly see all good things as he should
And discover with surprised delight that all good things are good!

And when all these fair requirements are fully now fulfilled
And when this blessed, blessed, state is unwilled yet not unwilled
Some sometimes, only sometimes, a Someone Quiet comes
Bearing Divine Gift of Joy for privileged boreded ones.

And seeing a cup of champagne, though place and time be formal
The thrice-bored one picks it up, and, not caring for the normal,
Places it upon his head, though it might well break,
And shows it to all in the place, for blessed laughter’s sake.



They say that sleepy, idle hands the devil’s workshop are
And through them myriad evil demons tempt us from afar.
But when the modern foolish child cry-complains “I’m bored.”
Tell them “Well-trained, idle minds are the workshop of the LORD.”